This is the first romance movie I have ever seen that requires a time line, so I will begin with The Idiot's Guide To The Lake House, a story of two people with a slight scheduling problem.
Cast of characters:
Alex Wyley, an architect who runs crews on a condo project
Kate, a doctor who has just finished her residency
Dad Wyley, the self-centered tyrant who designed and built the lake house Henry, Alex's brother, who takes a lot of crap from Dad, too
Morgan, Kate's would-be white knight, were it not for the fact that he Places His Career First
A Crudely Reconstructed Time Line
1. Spring 2004 Alex moves into the lake house.
2. Spring 2006 Kate moves out of the lake house to take a position in a Chicago hospital.
3. (2004//6) Alex and Kate are able to correspond across time threads and discover themselves to be soul mates who share a dog in trans-time. They also share a mysterious mail box which serves as a time portal, also providing quicker-than-real-time delivery, reading, and response service through the little red flag.
4. Kate, while discussing matters of the heart with her mom over lunch, has to rush to the aid of a man stricken in a traffic accident.
5.Alex, totally smitten, goes to Kate's birthday party and plants a steamy slow dance kiss on her unsuspecting mouth.
6. Kate, in a state of what we might call "rational thought", decides to call the whole trans-time thing off and demands that Alex cease corresponding. She returns to her old boyfriend, Morgan, who was never totally convinced that Kate and Alex had been discussing real estate at her party. But she looks great, even with short hair.
7. Dad dies. Nobody seems to mind. Now Alex can put down the hard hat and take up his true calling, architecture.
8.Alex goes to Morgan with the lake house key and tells him to give it to Kate (my bad: perhaps he was too upset to worry about fine details such as a lease, which might have contained his or his family's name).
(arrow back to the blank space before item #2)
9. (2004: discarded instance) Kate moves into the lake house, but now she is somehow unaware of Alex's existence - no, wait. We don't see this part, but presumably the dog does, and maybe she does tech support for the script writers, too.
(Arrow back to the blank space after item #3)
10. (2006: really) Kate, putting several realizations together, perhaps more slowly than the average doctor might have, is now aware that the dying man in the traffic accident was Alex, who she had told where she was on Valentine's Day of this year.
11. You think I'm giving this away? You must not have been wearing a hard hat!
12. The End (see item #10 for foreshadowing).
As you might have surmised, this film, while poetic and romantic in spirit, is grimly literal-minded in its method, and the combination doesn't wear all that well. A bit more mystery or a touch of indirection and vagueness might have better conveyed the magical mood the story needed. The actors knock themselves out, even Reeves, who has often seemed to care less what day it was or even what movie he was in - here he seems passionately focused, if awkward at times.
And the director, despite his earnest determination to show how many calendar days apart the characters are in almost every scene, shows at times that he really does understand the mystery of romantic passion. The Jane Austen references toward waiting for the right person, the walking architectural tour given by Alex, and that sweet slow dance, all show the precious blend of spiritual and physical connection that can weld two beings together in a moment. If only we had been given more of this...(and I hated The Notebook, too, dude!)
(For the record, this appears to be the first English language film by Argentine director Alejandro Agresti. I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and check out his earlier films, such as Un Mundo Menos Peor, as well as his coming projects).
Cast of characters:
Alex Wyley, an architect who runs crews on a condo project
Kate, a doctor who has just finished her residency
Dad Wyley, the self-centered tyrant who designed and built the lake house Henry, Alex's brother, who takes a lot of crap from Dad, too
Morgan, Kate's would-be white knight, were it not for the fact that he Places His Career First
A Crudely Reconstructed Time Line
1. Spring 2004 Alex moves into the lake house.
2. Spring 2006 Kate moves out of the lake house to take a position in a Chicago hospital.
3. (2004//6) Alex and Kate are able to correspond across time threads and discover themselves to be soul mates who share a dog in trans-time. They also share a mysterious mail box which serves as a time portal, also providing quicker-than-real-time delivery, reading, and response service through the little red flag.
4. Kate, while discussing matters of the heart with her mom over lunch, has to rush to the aid of a man stricken in a traffic accident.
5.Alex, totally smitten, goes to Kate's birthday party and plants a steamy slow dance kiss on her unsuspecting mouth.
6. Kate, in a state of what we might call "rational thought", decides to call the whole trans-time thing off and demands that Alex cease corresponding. She returns to her old boyfriend, Morgan, who was never totally convinced that Kate and Alex had been discussing real estate at her party. But she looks great, even with short hair.
7. Dad dies. Nobody seems to mind. Now Alex can put down the hard hat and take up his true calling, architecture.
8.Alex goes to Morgan with the lake house key and tells him to give it to Kate (my bad: perhaps he was too upset to worry about fine details such as a lease, which might have contained his or his family's name).
(arrow back to the blank space before item #2)
9. (2004: discarded instance) Kate moves into the lake house, but now she is somehow unaware of Alex's existence - no, wait. We don't see this part, but presumably the dog does, and maybe she does tech support for the script writers, too.
(Arrow back to the blank space after item #3)
10. (2006: really) Kate, putting several realizations together, perhaps more slowly than the average doctor might have, is now aware that the dying man in the traffic accident was Alex, who she had told where she was on Valentine's Day of this year.
11. You think I'm giving this away? You must not have been wearing a hard hat!
12. The End (see item #10 for foreshadowing).
As you might have surmised, this film, while poetic and romantic in spirit, is grimly literal-minded in its method, and the combination doesn't wear all that well. A bit more mystery or a touch of indirection and vagueness might have better conveyed the magical mood the story needed. The actors knock themselves out, even Reeves, who has often seemed to care less what day it was or even what movie he was in - here he seems passionately focused, if awkward at times.
And the director, despite his earnest determination to show how many calendar days apart the characters are in almost every scene, shows at times that he really does understand the mystery of romantic passion. The Jane Austen references toward waiting for the right person, the walking architectural tour given by Alex, and that sweet slow dance, all show the precious blend of spiritual and physical connection that can weld two beings together in a moment. If only we had been given more of this...(and I hated The Notebook, too, dude!)
(For the record, this appears to be the first English language film by Argentine director Alejandro Agresti. I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and check out his earlier films, such as Un Mundo Menos Peor, as well as his coming projects).